Today's consumers enjoy the ability to access a tremendous amount of media content, such as music and videos, at any location or time of day, using a wide variety of media devices. Computer systems such as media servers, which process requests using a large number of servers and/or provide content to a large number of clients, generally rely on the ability to distribute or load balance those requests based on the availability of particular servers, or the needs of particular clients. However, some traditional approaches to load balancing may provide inconsistent results. These are some examples of the types of environments in which embodiments of the invention can be used.